July 21, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (268)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 84: I’ve become such a pillow hog. I want, depending on if I’m working or resting, 4-6 firmish fluffy pillows at a time. I’ve entered the stage of life where there is so much discomfort from pain, painsomnia, heartburn that strikes randomly, and sleep deprivation that I require ALL THE PILLOWS as recompense. I’m still searching for a good cushion of some sort that will properly support my neck and back when I have to work from bed. Currently the imperfect solution is a stack of 5 pillows but they eventually slide or squish down.

Year 6, Day 85: Nothing like realizing that in your haze of overworkedness and sleep deprivation, you’ve gone and written the giant check using the wrong checkbook so that giant check is being drawn on the account that doesn’t have that much money while the right account that has all that money is sitting RIGHT THERE. DAMMIT! I went through all the options and none of them were “the best one” so I picked the least troublesome one for the guy: writing him a fresh check from the right account today and then plan to beg fee forgiveness from the wrong bank account whenever they return the check as unpaid. Sigh. Call this the “dumbass / too tired to exist” tax. I knew I’d drop some balls because of how tired I’ve been but I didn’t think it’d be a five figure ball.

Year 6, Day 86: We have the good fortune of having basic dental insurance that covers two cleanings a year and we’re diligent about making sure everyone goes. I’ve finally completely shifted us to a relatively consistent Jan/Feb and June/July schedule which feels like a small victory. My attempts to keep all routine appointments out of the Sept-Dec period are a tiny step towards keeping that fall to winter period a little bit more sane. I enjoy my own time in the dentist’s chair, but miss coasting for months and months without having to think about yet another appointment.

Naturally my current task is trying to find a slot on the calendar to add a “dabbling in — lessons” this summer before they return to school. There’s a local place but we’ve been warned that the traffic and parking in that area is terrible and that’s off-putting. For being SoCal born and bred where terrible traffic and bad parking is so common, my tolerance for that is almost non-existent. We’ll see. I promised JB that we’d give it a shot to see if we like the place and the sport enough to put up with the inconveniences. No pun intended. No clue how we’d make that work during the school year but if we can fit in 2-3 lessons before school starts, that should be a good taste.

Year 6, Day 87: Here’s an exasperating thing. I’ve developed a scent aversion to my deodorant. Both Degree and Suave which have been totally fine and don’t irritate my skin. It’s just that suddenly, I cannot stand the smell. This is really quite annoying. I bought some Dove deodorants which smell better but don’t work half as well. Also annoying.

I’ve been utterly dislocated in space and time this summer. Everything that should be routine hasn’t been. My weeks of alone time for whole days – nope. Instead it’s been travel and work stuff and home maintenance and more. My brain has gone into a weird (self protective?) huddle where it never really knows where I am on a map. Even when I was just walking around SF which I’m reasonably familiar with, my brain refused to connect to anything as familiar. I might as well have been in the city for the first time.

Year 6, Day 88: I was feeling Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer in my bones, so I put that on, following by Journey’s Any Way You Want It. Wilson Phillips and Hold On was next, as I contemplated how many of my friends who keep getting into bad relationships could do with taking those lyrics to heart. Pat Benatar’s We Belong came up next in the rotation and my heart felt gripped in maudlin remembering.

Very longtime readers were around during a tumultuous period of life when my coworkers and I loved to play Pat Benatar but everything else in that office was pure hell. I carried the awful from that job for years, took me ages to shed most of the defensive mechanisms. Rcently a colleague from that time affirmed my recollection of the toxicity and evil. They were further along in their career back then and even they were horrified by the pure meanness that dominated that office. Grateful that’s so far in the rearview that it’s just the occasional momentary ICK that sets in thanks to sensory memories.

July 14, 2025

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (267)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 77: It’s backlog city at work, with pretty rough waters ahead. No one is loving this. Nor am I loving how many times the blog has been acting up this week. This is very annoying.

Also annoying: The house maintenance is still not done. We’re through 78% of the interior work and I’m so fed up, I don’t WANT to do the last 22%. It doesn’t have to be done right away, thank goodness, because that’s another $5000 and 2 weeks of disruption when we do get to it but *deepest disgruntled sigh* I am tired of living in drywall bits and dodging plastic covering. Can we please just have everything back to normal for a while?

Background listening: the Magnum PI reboot.
Higgins: Oh no, he looks angry.
Magnum: That’s just his face, isn’t it?
#ItMe

Year 6, Day 78: I’m stressed to my very marrow with deadlines, impossible KPIs, and … well. Need there be more? Oh yes, and working myself into the ground, late in the wee hours every night. I finally had to take a night “off”. It was off in the sense that I didn’t do actual productive work. It was not off in the sense of having turned off the stress meter.

I decided to combat stress with “stress”: Examining our tax spreadsheets closely to better understand each line of each Schedule. This sort of thing usually starts with frowning but over time as I pore over the instructions, it forces my brain to let go of the things I can do absolutely nothing more about and focus on learning something. This time: SALT. I didn’t realize that I’d been slowly mentally miscategorizing what actually falls under the SALT deduction and today’s close examination cleared that up. It’s comprised of the state and local taxes we pay (on our W2s), state and local real estate taxes, and state and local personal property taxes. The italics were necessary for my brain to actually absorb what specific taxes they’re talking about. Now I know where my car license registration deduction belongs (personal property tax)! I reorganized our spreadsheet to follow the exact order of Schedule A. Honestly it hasn’t really mattered since 2017, because of the $10,000 cap but if the cap has really changed to $40,000, then getting these numbers all right will matter this year.

I do still need to figure out which part of the property tax payments fall into the 2025 tax year because ours are split weirdly across years and it’s too late for my brain to take this information and do anything useful with it: “Only taxes paid in 2024 and assessed prior to 2025 can be deducted for 2024. State or local law determines whether and when a property tax is assessed, which is generally when the taxpayer becomes liable for the property tax imposed.”

Year 6, Day 79: HOOOOboy. 7 hours of meetings. What a crap day. I did manage (thanks to Costco readymade foods) to put dinner on the table in reasonably short order: scalloped potatoes, beef kebabs, sauteed green beans and broccoli. I was disappointed in this bag of green beans, though. We normally handpick every green bean from a local produce market but I was in a hurry at Costco and threw a bag of their prepackaged green beans into the cart. I should have noticed the condensation that was going to lead to bad beans.

I bought the last two items our Lakota sponsee requested recently. Once I send the shipping information, sadly, I’m going to end our sponsorship. The organization asks that we send packages 4-6 times a year and talk to the individual to build a relationship. I started off strong at first, sending packages every 4-6 weeks but, without judgment – this is purely observational – the sponsee’s communication is very sporadic. It’s tough under normal circumstances, it takes a lot of effort to get enough information to work with but it’s feeling impossible now. These past 24 months, my work has increased exponentially. I can barely manage to throw hot food on the table twice a day for the people I live with. Chasing down my sponsee to get more than a few words now and again takes time that I simply don’t have anymore. This also feels crappy because the point of a sponsorship is to build a relationship. I hate failing at that but I’ve already been failing them from this aspect. So rather than beating myself over the head with guilt for not being able to be five people at once, I’m going to need to step away.

Year 6, Day 80: I still hold close a daydream of a time when I’ll have the time, money, energy and stamina to ride horses again. It’s what I’m working towards every single time I do a few minutes of exercises. That, and the ability to heft a large dog over 55-60 lbs into the car. I can’t adopt a dog I can’t lift since I’m the primary dog caretaker. It’s my own personal rule, I hate being dependent on other people to care for my own, even if it’s PiC. Sometimes that’s just pure practicality, it’s easier for me to break away and take the dog to the vet than for him. He handles more of the kids back and forthing, I handle the dogs’. No idea when all the planets will align.

I found a local barn today and got overexcited considering all the lesson options they have. I know how to ride but my body has to do the slow and steady rebuilding of foundational rides again before I can even think about asking to jump. I miss it so much it hurts (but what doesn’t?) and I feel that urge to be cruel to myself for my body’s shortcomings. Now that I know what it is, it’s easier to redirect and not fall into the negativity spiral.

Anyway, barns made me think of boots and I went looking for work boots. Used to be, I could buy a work boot style for $20 at Payless and they’d last me several years, protecting my toes from mischievous hooves. Now, browsing Boot Barn, there’s nothing with a heel and steel/reinforced toe under $100 and ranging up to $250. I’m looking for something like this. I’d also need a helmet and comfortable riding pants, when the time comes.

Year 6, Day 81: Every day I end my day trying to remind myself that we can only do what we can do and I can only do so much. I’ve already wrecked myself twice this week trying to do more than my body can handle.

Some things are getting better at work but not enough and not fast enough, so it’s back to feeling like I can’t get enough done in any single, even 18 hour day, anymore. I don’t like this at all.